Writer Shame vs. Writer Guilt

I recently found myself on Oprah.com listening to Dr. Brené Brown explain the difference between guilt and shame. If you have two minutes and fifty-two seconds, this video is worth your while.

In summary: Guilt is the recognition that we made a mistake and we need to do better. Shame is a label or identity we take on as a result of a mistake. For example, if I lose my temper with my teenaged son and end up calling him an idiot (hypothetically speaking, of course), guilt would lead me to recognize it wasn’t my best parenting moment, and I need to apologize. Shame would lead me to call myself a bad mother. It’s clear which is the desired state.

What is frightening, however, is not only how easy it is to slip into a “shame cycle,” but also the correlation between shame and addiction, mental illness, and other serious issues. Examining how we cope with problems when they arise in every aspect of our lives is critical to our relationships and mental health. As writers, it is also important we examine our reaction to setbacks in the creative realm with a healthy response.

Rejection

If you are a writer, rejection is a certainty. Every single writer at every single step of the process has and will experience it. From teachers, to critique partners, to agents, editors, reviewers, and the reading public, wanted and unwanted feedback is as ingrained in the work as pen and paper. Those authors who make a career out of writing aren’t necessarily more talented than unpublished writers, but they are more stubborn. More positively: they adapt and move on. They understand rejection is not personal, or the work isn’t ready, or the timing isn’t right. Instead of labeling themselves “bad writers,” they revise the work, make changes in their presentation, or write a new book.

History

Our internal voices probably have a lot to do with how we were raised. Were our parents, teachers, and other adults in our lives encouraging, open, honest, and trustworthy, or did we grow up in a home where we were put down, told we were no good, or witnesses to bullies and victims? I was fortunate. My parents were supporting and loving people. It is likely easier for me to understand failure is a detour and not a stop sign. But during periods of darkness, the demons of shame are hard for anyone to overcome.

Navigation

There is nothing like that last copy edit before going to press to convince a writer she is a fraud and her work is trash—hypothetically speaking, of course. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t experience doubt. Writers need a trusted friend or two who can provide the support necessary at those times. My critique partner and I often say that we simply repeat encouragement back and forth when the other needs it. I’m not speaking of empty praise or flattery, but reminders of healthy and honest thinking patterns. Cultivate a tribe to help you navigate through the shame.

Guilt

I’m Catholic. Guilt is something woven into the fabric of my existence. Until seeing Dr. Brown’s video, I did not fully understand the positive outcome guilt has had on my life, and the power derived from knowing I can and will do better. That sense that there are forces in the universe wishing for my good, and that naming shame exposes and withers it, has served me well.

Ritual

When I sit down to write, I think of two rejections. The first is from a well-respected editor at a major house. He said, “We all laughed in our editorial meeting about your little Nancy Drew protagonist. She finds a problem; she fixes it. Finds a problem and fixes it.”

Then I think of a reviewer’s words. “Ughhhhh….Chick Lit dressed up as Historical Fiction.”

Humiliating thought it is, I’m naming my shame. Some of those books have gone onto become regional and national bestsellers, and have reaped warm and wonderful reader emails and letters, but I still think about the criticism every time I sit down to write.

To move forward, I created a ritual. I stare at the labels and criticisms for a moment, consider how they were accurate and how they were not, and how I can use them to improve my craft.

Then I turn on classical music and light a candle. I imagine the flame burning the shame, the doubt, and the hurt to ashes.

From those, I rise up and begin again.

What are your rituals to move past shame and self-doubt? What can you do to encourage healthy responses to rejection in your writing life?

Erika Robuck (@ErikaRobuck) self-published her first novel, RECEIVE ME FALLING. Penguin Random House published her subsequent novels, HEMINGWAY’S GIRL, CALL ME ZELDA, FALLEN BEAUTY, THE HOUSE OF HAWTHORNE, and GRAND CENTRAL, a collaborative short story anthology. Erika writes about and reviews historical fiction at her blog, Muse, and is a contributor to fiction blog, Writer Unboxed. She is also a member of the Historical Novel, Hemingway, Millay, and Hawthorne Societies.

Comments

Well your insightful eye opening and well written commentary on guilt vs. shame has been truly eye opening and constructive. It has taken me 14 years to write a now 525 page book that will soon become the definitive book on Ernest Hemingways depresssion, and in that time one of my closest family members has taken enjoyment in bullying me like using the phrase when I turned 39, I’ve been hearing about this book for 39 years (since my birth no less lol) and that he hasn’t seen nothing (meaning no results.) Its because I’ve had to write my book without a book contract, and write only on my days off while working close to 30 hours a week at my main job. The same family member once said Hemingway ruined my life, but in spite of it all thanks to a friend I made in 2010 I now have a powerful book proposal, she introduced me to a literary agent in 2015, and Im due to follow-up with him once I complete my final ten pages worth of writing. And the same friend offered to set up a meeting between me and an editor she knows at Simon & Schuster for me to give a presentation on my book. Its all thanks to God and perseverance. Thanks to your article I feel no more shame. Thank you.

Thank you so much! Hemingways granddaughter author Lorian Hemingway and Hemingways publisher Charles Scribner III both told me on separate occasions that I am on a “quest”. Lorian even gave me her personal email address at her book signing in Key West in 2004 when I presented my research to the Hemingway Society and we were email buddies for ten years. I’ve had a great support system and also great critics but my book became a calling in my life. I was blessed to discover Hemingway had two major exposures from toxic lead by the age of 35 one of which that was a retained lead bullet from a 1935 shooting accident while fishing on the Polar and it was never removed. And I also learned he had so many concussions this he is now a candidate for CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy also known as degenerative brain disease. CTE was first discovered in the medicine by Dr. Bennet Omalu in the brains of former NFL football players as early as 2006. I am a man on a mission and even had to overcome illness of my own. Thank you for your kind words of support, it means a lot.

Scott, I, too, am a big Hemingway fan! I toured his house in Key West this February and while I was there, I got the inspiration to do more research on his life. I also visited his island in Mexico where he wrote many of his novels. I guess you could say I’m in love with a ghost! He has been such an inspiration to me, I’d love to read your book when you get it published! Good luck and keep up the great work, great works of art don’t happen overnight.

Thanks so much Lucy! Happy to meets fellow Hemingway afficianado.. Please look for my booksfacebook page and “like” it to get my updates: Hemingway’s Mania. Nice to meet you. I too visited Hemingways Key West house. It felt like being in Elvis Presley’s Graceland.

Thank you for the distinctions you make. They are so important. I made a mistake vs. I am a mistake. What’s funny is that when I was growing up I had no sense of guilt or shame. My mother would make me stand in a corner to think of the bad thing I’d done, usually disobedience, but I never felt sorry and so would refuse to apologize. Standing in a corner was totally worth it for playing out well past dark. But I’ve grown up since then … and that Catholic guilt has made a huge difference. I am able to confess my failures and have a renewed desire to amend my life.

For me, the only way to get past the rejection is to quit submitting and focus on the writing. That also takes care of the feelings of being a fraud.

I’m Catholic too, Erika, so guilt can be a hard hit at my back. What helps me is to read other highly successful authors’ negative reviews. Somehow that levels the playing field when someone like Donna Tart, a Pulitzer prize winning author, gets nearly 10% 1-star reviews with really harsh remarks (The Goldfinch). Sometimes authors are not always writing at their best, or readers sometimes can’t or don’t appreciate the story for whatever reasons or are not fair and accurate in judgment. As in indie author who works hard not only to write my best but also works hard for every review and every book sale, this is an ongoing and challenging issue: to keep steady and move on.

Excellent reminders, Erika. Here’s something I find helpful when I’m feeling shame, doubt, or generally mopey/self-pitying: I get over myself.

Here’s a recent reminder. I attended a community gathering full of people I only see a couple of times a year, and ran into a longtime, supportive beta-reader. Standing in a group of a dozen acquaintances talking, the reader was kind enough to ask the status of my work in regard to its publication. I said something along the lines of, “Getting close. Fingers crossed.”

The group conversation immediately following this exchange made a couple of things very clear. First, most people in our community now know that I’m a writer. Second, they had no idea I was still unpublished. Which leads one to the natural deduction: They couldn’t care less.

I mean, they were all nice enough about it – but it was clear to me that, even once I am pubbed, it won’t affect their lives in the slightest. Duh, right?

Don’t get me wrong. I hope to one day connect with readers. Lots of them, hopefully. I hope my words will have an impact on those who are *meant* to find them. I want to sell well, and to have the chance to continue to publish. But the vast majority of well-meaning folks will remain blissfully unaffected by my publication status, as well as by how my work is ultimately received, circulated, reviewed, etcetera.

The thought reminds me to focus on the good stuff, like those who actually are in my corner (thank you!), and on those (few, so far) who’ve actually connected with the work, and found some level of resonance.

Thanks again, Erika! Here’s to getting over ourselves and keeping the focus on what matters: the work and those who connect with it.

Wonderful article, thank you! Wish I could’ve read it and taken it in when I was a teen.

Vaughn,

Your note cracked me up–I have written and pubbed 27 romance novels, and the response I get from my small town community (clubs, neighbors, church) is ‘Oh. Erm… I don’t read those books.’ And then the conversation moves on to other things. So yeah, we need to find our tribe. And you will–keep on writing.

Erika–Thanks for your post. You present a useful analysis of shame and guilt, but my shorthand understanding of these concepts goes like this: Guilt is something internal, the product of learned values on a personal, private level. As a Catholic, you have absorbed the Church’s teachings, and when you know you’ve done/said/thought something at odds with those teachings, you experience guilt. Shame on the other hand is social: the experience has mostly to do with perceiving oneself as having violated a communal, group-based set of standards or behaviors. You are shamed by a sense being the object of others’ disapproval, not what you charge yourself with. Here come those editors/critique groups/agents, et al. Or at least that’s how I’ve always understood it. What’s the answer in either case? I suppose developing calluses on the ego is about all a writer can do. That, and coming, over time, to a sense of confidence about how and what s/he writes. That makes it easier to sort the wheat from the chaff of criticism. It’s important to hear others, and learn from them–and it’s also important to know when they’re just wrong and you’re right.

I’ve seen Dr Brené Brown before, a TED talk I believe. Although I find her distinction useful, and it’s certainly seems to be the prevailing one among social scientists these days, I learned to distinguish these two differently, based on the difference between a guilt culture and a shame culture–specifically, Rome vs. Greece.

Shame involves a loss of status among others, which can indeed be internalized as a lack of self worth. Greece was a shame culture, which partially explains Achilles’ extreme reaction to being shamed by Agamemnon.

Guilt involves recognition that I have done something that violates my own sense of right and wrong. Guilt prevents us from violating our own moral code even if “not even the gods would know,” as the Roman thinker Cicero put it to his son in a letter titled “On Duties.”

Guilt is a solitary recognition of wrongdoing. Shame is a social sense of being ostracized or humiliated and being labeled by others accordingly.

Both can be felt as a sense of personal worthlessness, and that is the truly soul-crushing aspect of them both. For example, others may forgive me for what I’ve done, exonerating me of guilt, but I may still hold onto a sense of culpability and worthlessness that is totally self-generated.

One remedy, to quote a certain comedian turned senator from Minnesota in one of his more famous roles, is to remind oneself: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

Or you can do that really cool thing with the candle and the music, which I fully intend to steal.

I thought, “How dare those people talk to you that way? who do they think they are?” Somehow, it’s okay to talk to writers (or anyone at all) in this way? Rude, demeaning – well, I’m indignant on your behalf.

Hi Erika, I am a retired psychiatrist/aspiring novelist. I am afraid you have missed the key points of guilt v shame. Guilt can motivate “doing better” but that is an egocentric perspective and ignores the interpersonal. Guilt motivates atonement. If I am at a party and clumsily break someone’s vase, I feel guilt, but simply being more careful next time is not enough. To address my guilt I have to atone for it, make reparation by the specific actions of apologising and paying for a replacement. I probably will also feel ashamed but this promotes very different behaviors. My guilt and shame battle it out and if I am big enough my above guilt behaviors win the day. If I am not big enough and my shame wins through I may sneak off and pretend that it wasn’t me who broke the vase. Guilt promotes confession (cf Catholicism) shame promotes deception and hiding. Shame is a particularly difficult problem in anorexia nervosa. Anorexics, who have my sympathy, rarely apologize for their sneaky acts with food; they much more commonly deny them and hide the evidence.

You make an interesting point. I am certainly not a psychiatrist, but Dr. Brown’s distinction seems like a good place to begin. The healthy response is the desired outcome in all cases–in relationships and in writing. Best wishes with your work!

Rituals, let’s see, um-er-ah- ok ok ok, I hug- no, I embrace my shame and self-doubt. It helps with identifying the stimulus of said feelings. And in doing so, I stay connected to the relationship of Mr. & Ms. Cause and Effect.

So: I Embrace I identify I observe I come to a realization And finally, I file it in a crease of my cerebrum

Considering I have just completed my fifth beginning to my novel (would you say beginnings are hard for me? ) I can say thanks for your post. I too am Catholic and love the distinction between guilt and shame. I think I would feel truly guilty if I didn’t keep writing and querying and rewriting. That might lead to shame.

Thanks for reminding me about this distinction- I’m going to re-read my Brene Brown now. How we frame the way we think is so important, and the guilt vs. shame mindset makes a huge difference. I’m Catholic, too, but I have Jewish grandparents, and now I have working-Mom guilt… I have it all! :)

I forgot to tell you that I shared this article on WFWA (Women’s Fiction Writers Association) Facebook page. It is a great article for all writers, and I received lots of good comments back. I get rejections almost weekly. Good rejections and bad rejections. But I also put myself out there– every week. So, I try to think of that as a positive. I am not hiding away my work! If I have learned anything from writers…keep trying!! I have thick skin, thicker now after querying. And I won’t lie, at times, they can wear you down. But you really gave me a new perspective. Thank you for this great article. Maybe you help breathe a little wind back into my sails…to take on another week.